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smerconish in philadelphia. in september of 2019, joe biden was asked how many$#ursqj he ha spoken to son hunter about his overseas business activities. the then candidate's answer a was this. >> i have never spoken to my son about that. >> that has remained his answer until this week. on monday white house press secretary was asked about this issue, only this time her answer was different. she said that she had been asked the question a million times and the answer remains the same. but in fact the first time instead of saying the president had never spoken to hunter about his business dealings, she said this. >> the president was never in business with his son. >> so on wednesday, phil wegman pointed out the insistent sit, but she insisted the answer was the same. >> i just want to clear this up once if and are all. the president has said he's

never discussed overseas business dealings with his son, but the white house now says that the president has never been in business with his son. so why the updated language? which statement is true? or is it semantics and they are both true? >> as i was stated on monday, nothing has changed. nothing has changed. nothing has changed. and so you can ask me a million different ways on this question. nothing has changed. >> it's understandable that the president would like to redo his initial response from 2019. his outright denial never made sense. what parent does not discuss their children's work? especially when the parent is in the midst of a year's long effort to save that child from self-destructive behavior. and in this case, it's been well documented that in 2013 hunter biden accompanied vice president joe biden on a trip to china, where it was later discovered

hunter was meeting with a businessssociate. as detailed later by josh letterman, one of the reporters o nt on the trip. he wrotequote, what wasn't known then was as he accompanied his father to china, hunter biden was forming a chinese prateffquity fund that associates said at the time was planning to raise big money including from china. hunter biden has acknowledged meeting with jonatn e, a chinese banker and his business partner in the fund dunghe trip, although his spokesman said it was a social visit. the chinese business license that brought the new fund into existence was issued by shanghai authorities ten days after the trip with hunter biden a member of the board. the story continues to evolve and no doubt that's one reason why wednesday's plea agreement hearing was anything but routine. ten days ago irs whistleblowers testifyied before the house oversight committee. they were credible. he will join me in a moment. they testified under oath between 2014 and 2019 hunter

failed to report or pay tax on perhaps $17 million he received from foreign sources. they said their investigation into the taxes had been thwarted and recommended charging with far more seerious crimes than what he agreed to plead guilty to. now i hear some of you saying, there's always a attention between investigators and prosecutors. that's true. but it's a fair question to learn whether this was that norm or the result of political influence. a day after the whistleblower testimony came senator chuck gra grassley's release of the 1023 form, which memorializeslaims from an fbi informant and doesn't e proof the allegations are true. cnn reported the fument says an informant described meeting where the ceo of of ukrainian energy company claimed that he had made two $5 million

payments to the bidens, though he didn't specify who received the bribes. it cost $5 million to pay one bidean$5 million to pay another biden, htold the fbi informant at the 2016 meeting, according to the document. the informant whom the fbi described as highly credible as not been able to provide any opinion as the veracity of the claims and as phillip bump reported in8%d "the washington post," he has in the past denied ever speaking with the bidens. i hear some of you saying that's an unverified account. true. that doesn't mean all inquiry should end. just it needs to be corroborated. on monday the oversight committee will conduct a transcribed interview with a former close business associate of hunter biden. "the new yorst previewed the testimony and he will say he's witness to calling his father in the midst of business dealings. and there's that whatsapp

message whistleblower alleges hunter sent to a ceo of a management company in 2017. according to this testimony,he message said i'm sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment s t been fulfilled tell the director that i would like to resolve this nowefe it gets out of hand and now means to the message goes on to say i will make n that the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regrekt gret not following my direction. i'm sitting here waiting for the call with my father. the president has denied he was sitting with hunter when the message was sent. was he really with his father? who knows? maybe hunter was bluffing to impress his business associates, but it continues to beg the question of whether con trir to a father never discussing his son's business the picture is more complicated. and it was in this context that hunter went to federal court in

delaware on wednesday for what was expected to be the routine acceptance by a judge of a plea agreement. hunter came ready to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and avert prosecution on a gun charge by enrolling in a two-year diversion program for non-violent offenders, but the judge said no. she said the arrangement relate ed to the gun possession offense was unusual and that it contained nonstandard term such as broad immunity from other potential charges. maybe she's not ignorant of these other developments i have referenced and doesn't want to be in a situation where something else materializes that warrants additional charges that hunter would then be protected from by the plea agreement, as it was presented. and that's why she told both sides she felt like they were using her as a rubber stamp. the judge asked prosecutors whether the plea agreement would procollude of hunter biden for lus related to foreign lob

bying. the prosecutor said no, which caused hunter biden to say he could not agree to any deal that didn't offer broad immunity. reactions to all of this, the deal falling apart, democrats say this is the 2023 version of republicans, benghazi, benghazi, benghazi. and hunter is being singled out for harsh treatment because of republican vendettas. but ilene o'connor, who headed the justice department tax division from 2001 to 2007, wrote in the "wall street journal" that he was singled out for a different reason. for favorable treatment. and that anyone else in this tuation would probable g prison. for many years, it has been e department policy to charge the most serious offense that can be proven. he chinged that policy in december of 2022, the tax division manual stilprides that prosecutors are

specifically prohibited for permitting a defendant to plead to a misdemeanor with the elements of a felony can be proven. and according to the whistleblowers' accounts, that's what's happening here. i have said before that my gut tells me that any lapse of judgment on joe's part was m motivated more by a desire to save a son from addiction than an effort to line his own pocket. it was probably thrilled in having his son aboard air force two regardless of the purpose of making the trip because he knew the alternative could be that lifestyle that was exposed when the laptop was made public. all know for sure is a turs reply of never doesn't cut it. it requires a full accounting by the president and the longer he waits, the more it's going to fester. and he isdqbhvmn1 capable of chn it comes to acknowledging controversies. they acknowledged grandchild number seven for whom hunter had

denied pa turnty and now paying child support. in a statement to people magazine, jill and i only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including navy. perhaps a similar clarification regarding the business is in the offing. joining me now is joseph ziggler, one of the agents who blew the whistle on the handling of this case. he published this opinion piece titled "a special counsel for hunter biden." thank you so much for being here. what is it that the tax manual required that was not done in this case? >> i appreciate you so much for having me. so in the tax manual, i pointed this out, that if you have a felony charge, if you have the evidence for the felony, and you also have the evidence for the misdemeanor, it's departmental policy that you have to charge the felony. the reason for that is

inequitable treatment of taxpayers. like we stated before, the signed prosecutor, which included doj tax attorneys, all agreed to recommend the approval for the felony and misdemeanor charges they called them slam dunk charges. >> in your op-ed, you characterized the doj's behavior as obstruction. here's my question. do you think that there was concerted action, activity here by individuals in doj, maybe in the irs, concerted activity not to pursue the case aggressively, or more benignly perhaps, they are just afraid of rattling the cage of a high-profile family and defendants? >> the reason for me coming forward is this is all about preferential treatment of one person, and we're not treating taxpayers the same. so i guess i would point to the facts. the fact are that we're not

following the normal process as a part of investigating this case. the judge stated that we can't reinvestigate this case. i agree with her. what i'm asking her is we finished the tax investigation. we proved the tax count for 2017, 2018, and 2019. and i think that's so important that those staumts of facts in the represented in court stated he miscategorized expenses. i don't know how anyone could consider a mischaracterization of you're claiming you were blacklisted from it. yet you are deducting that as a business expense on your tax returns. it did you want make any sense. >> why is david not saying he was thwarted.

i read the letters he sent to congress. he's not in sync with what you have offered. >> i have no idea what his motivation is. but what i can tell you is that his letter is changing. our account is not. his letter stated that his most recent let stated to the house committee that he has the u ultimate authority in his jurisdiction of delaware, and if he needs to go to the central district of california or the district of d.c. this he needs some special counsel authority or special attorney authority. that only came out after our whistleblower testimony came out. that recount of what happened only came out after that. so at the end of the day, i

thought i the right thing. we met with him so many times. you have proven this absolutely. 201, 2018, 2019, i agree with those charges. that felony and misdemeanor charges. i don't know how we came to where we charged only the misdemeanor in this case. >> final question. i paid close attention to your testimony. you have come forward at the risk of great personal sacrifice. what was tipping point? what was that which you saw and you said i've got to speak up? >> so i guess at the end of the day, i was brought up in a family that you have to do the right thing. at the end of everything, at the end of all this turmoil, you have to do the right thing. and i thought to myself that if this is going to change people's opinions of me, me coming forward, shame on them.

this isn't a democrat or republican problem. this is is justice blind. we are bringing evidence forward that justice is not blind. and people are given preferential treatment and we need to learn from that so this doesn't happen again in the future. >> thank you for your testimony and thank you for being here today. >> can add one more thing? >> it's not too late for a department of justice to look at this and realize we made a mistake. it's not too late. that would restore the faith in our justice system that it's working, that we care about charging the crimes and we are holding everyone accountable the same across the board. >> i think that deserves a response. thank you for offering it. >> thank you so much.

hit me up on social media. i'll read some responses. what has come in? >> why are you so obsessed with hunter biden? why not bring up the billions jared got. if jared had been in federal court this past week and what was -- put that camera back on me. i want to speak directly to this person. if jared had been in court this past week in delaware with what was anticipated to be a routine acceptance of a plea agreement that had fallen apart in the context of all of these other events, then today i would be sitting here and talking about jared. i'm not obsessed with hunter. i feel sorry for hunter. i think i get the whole dialic as i laid it out i'm not going to ignore it. still to come at this week's house oversight hearing on ufos, military pilots testified about their own firsthand encounters and an intelligence official accused the government of cover-ups. will we get the full story?

check out this week's poll question at smerconish.com. do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft? and last night's 13 gop candidates cob verged in iowa, including donald trump. trump said friday he would not end his white house run even if he were convicted and sentenced on the cases he's facing. i'll discuss in just a second. donald trump is running to stay out of prison. and if we elect -- i know, i know, i know, i know. i know the truthth is hard. tv: try tide power pods with 85% more tide in every pod. who needs that much more tide?

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that's why subway's proffered by this champ. and this future champ. and if we proffer it, we know you'll proffer it too. he's cocky for a nineteen year old. after much anticipation, former president trump was subjected to more federal criminal charge this is week, just not in the way we anticipated. while everybody was waiting for a january 6th fresh indictment, instead the charges from the first criminal indictment were expanded. here's what trump said last night at the iowa republican party's annual spring fundraiser. >> they want to weaponize the

irs just like they weaponized the justice department and the fbi. by the way, if i weren't running, i would have nobody coming after me. or if i was losing by a lot, i would have nobody coming after me. >> trump said earlier on friday he would not end his run for the white house even if he were convicted and sentenced in any of the criminal investigations against him. joining me to discuss is senior legal analyst elie honig. great to see you again. other than trying to get the new defendant to flip, was there any need for jack smith to file a superseding indictment, or was he seeking to send a message? >> well, there was a substantiative difference in the second h@tindictment. in addition to adding the third defendant, there are three new charges now against donald trump. the most important one, in my view, there's now one additional classified document. the 32nd document, there were 31 before. and this is crucial because this

is the document that allegedly donald trump held up at bedminster when he was no longer president related to an iranian war plan he showed to others. there's an audio tape of him discussing it. donald trump said there was no document. it turns out there was. doj charged that. there were also two new objection of justice count cos that relate to this not just to move the boxes around. that was already charged. but now it's charging obstruction on top of obstruction because the allegation is they tried to delete the internal surveillance video footage. so there is some new problems for donald trump beyond the addition of a new codefendant. >> where i'm coming from, i think that material would have come into trial against donald trump. it strikes me that jack smith wants the public to know the whole story and therefore, reveals more than he needs to reveal. and something else. the dates, the times, the locations, the speech, what is left for there to be a factual

dispute about. it seems like here's the case. trump better hope he has a legal defense meaning presidential records act or otherwise he has a real problem. >> i would agree with you. every time get a new indictment, i read it twice. first with my traditional prosecutor's eye. this one struck me as strong. then i read it again and say what's the defense going to be. not only is the defense will be one of these constitutional defendants. the best defense is nonlegal. the best defense is for donald trump to get this thing pushed past the election and hope he wins, which he will dispose of this case. the other defense or hope for donald trump given the strength of the evidence here is the jury pool. this case will be tried in florida. even in the southern portion of florida. he got 45% of the vote. and the reality is your jury in

had case is going to have minimum six people on it who voted for donald trump. jurors are supposed to put aside their political lieanings. they are human beings. they will bring their belief into the courtroom. >> is there a practical concern that these prosecutors barricades are being erected in fullton county, as we are speaking. is there a practical consideration they need to have to have a perception of piling on that the members of the public who don't pay close attention to all of this are saying, wait, they charge him again and again. why is this all happening now when the new election is underway? >> that absolutely is a public perception and something that will persist first of all, if we see, as is widely expected, as i certainly expect, if we see an indictment coming very soon from

doj from jack smith relating to january 6th or the effort to steal the election, if they send charges, the effort to steal the georgia election, that will really contribute to public perceptions of piling on. if jack smith has georgia covered, why suz duz an elected da then need to pile on. the other thing is the timing really matters here. and i think these charges are well justified. i think if we charge january 6th, it will be well justified. but why did it take two and a half years. why did it take us until after donald trump announced his candidacy. i believe doj could have charged these cases a long time ago. the fact that these are coming now as the election really heats up is going to only fuel that public perception. >> i feel the same way about willis' case in georgia. people are going to say this pertains to the perfect phone call that trump made in the aftermath of the last cycle. we're within three weeks of the first debate in this cycle.

thank you for being here. always appreciate your expertise. >> thank you. up ahead, words i have never spoken on cnn. hñbiolo. believers are seizing on details revealed at the house hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena. i'll talk to the expert who recently dug up an extraterrestrial object from deep in the ocean to analyze its origins. i want to remind you to go to smer smerconish.com and answer the poll question. do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft?

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and get up to $1000 off the new galazy z flip 5 and z fold 5. has the government been covering up signs of extraterrestrial life? this week three retired military veterans testified at a house

hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, what are commonly referred to as ufos, two a former pilot had seen such objects themselves. think warned these sightings present a national security problem. and the government has been two secretive about them. the third to testify, former air force intelligence officer david grush had this exchange with representative nancy mace. >> do you believe officials at the national security apparatus have withheld information from congress and subverted our oversight authority? >> there are certain elected leaders that had more information. i'm not sure what they have shared. but certain ly. >> based on your experience and extensive conversations with

experts u do you believe our government has made contact with intelligence extraterrestrials? >> something i can't discuss in a public setting. >> dp you believe we have crashed craft, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft? >> biologics came with some of these recoveries, yes. >> were they human or nonhuman? >> nonhuman, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program that are currently still in the program. >> nonhuman, he said. the hearing received sharp criticism in a posting by dr. shawn who runs the pentagon' recently formed all domain resolution office. i cannot let yesterday's hearing pass without sharing how insulting it was to the officers of the department of defense and intelligence community who chose to join. many with not unreasonable anxieties about the career risk this is would entail. my next guest has unique

credentials in the field. on january 8 of 2014, a fireball from space blazed through earth into the scene off new giveny. the location, velocity and brightness were recorded and quietly tucked away in a database of similar events. well, last month, harvard astrophysicist led an expedition that retrieved fragmentes off the western pacific sea floor. he's the head of the project and founding director of harvard university's black hole initiative. he's the best selling author of extraterrestrial, the first sign of intelligent life beyond earth. his new book will be out next month. do you believe the government is in possession of alien spacecraft? >> thanks for having me.

it's not a matter of belief. either they have it or not. and if they do, i think it's inappropriate because it's just like stepping out to your backyard and finding a tennis ball thrown by a neighbor and telling your family members nothing about it. basically, they don't know that we have neighbors. that is inappropriate because it has nothing to do with national security. it has a lot to do with science. we would like to know if we have neighbors in our environment. >> what would be the motivation of the government trying to keep this under wrap? is it fear of panic? fear in the country that would be unharnessed? what? >> my guess it has to do with the fact that they can't make sense of it. and perhaps they have the benefit of being paid by the department of defense. otherwise i cannot make any sense of it.

they might not have it. we just don't know. we have to see the evidence. david was the secondhand witness.=hñ >> it's going to the pacific ocean might be easier in terms of learning about the space. and listening to politicians in washington, d.c. >> i'm going to ask you about your trip in a moment. you're right. he's a degree of separation, it seems to me frrks those we would most want to speak to. but nothing stays secret these days. everybody writes a book. is it practical to think we could have alien spacecraft in our possession and someone who touched it feel it, seen it would reveal that evidence?

>> it's unlikely. with only a small number of people aware of it. we don't know until the evidence would be present ed. but the good news is as a result of the hearing on wednesday, david rush promised to provide details of the people who had firsthand experience with the program. so presumably, the representative to get in touch with them, we would get to the bottom of it in the coming months. >> take my final 60 seconds and tell me what do you think you retrieved from the pacific ocean floor a mile down? >> we used magnets to get some droplets from the surface. it crashed there and there were roughly a milligram each. and now we are studying them at harvard university using the best instruments that the world

has to offer. we're collaborate ing with the corporation and the university of technology and hopefully within a month, we know the composition. and we could tell if this material is different than the one we had in the common and whether it's technology. it's from semi conductors, from computer screens, from stainless steel. just think of it as colliding with another planet and burning up as a meteor. >> social media reaction. i'm going to put it on the screen and ul read it aloud. if they did have a alien craft, why would they hide it? take a second crack at that. i have already raised the issue. >> only for commercial reasons. more for having some advantage over adversaries.

but as we all know given the nuclear program was not very secretive. the russians until whether it's real or not until i see the evidence. and we better see the evidence because scientists are best to make sense of it. >> right. we want it in your hands at harvard to tell us what it really means. thank you. look forward to your book next month. >> thank you for having me. please go and vote on today's poll question. while you're there, register for the daily newsletter. people love it. it's free. do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft? still to come, are americans losing confidence in the military? we'll explore this alarming trend that's hurting u.s. institutions and get the reasons behind it. that's why this qb profers the new five meat beast. and this qb profers it. and if we profer it. we know you'll profer it too.. are you trying to outspokesperson m me? maybe.

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off the battlefield? confidence in american institutions on the whole is in decline. small business is thu.s. institution in which we have the most faith followed by the american military. but even faith in the military is on the way. 60% of americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military. that's down 4% in the last year. a new book argues that even that level of support is actually hollow. peter fever is a political science professor at duke university. he's the author of thanks for your service, the causes and consequences of public confidence in the u.s. pmilitar. welcome back. if public confidence in the military is high but it's hollow, does that suggest that some don't mean it when they say thank you for your service? >> i think that's the case. it's what political psychologists call social

desirability. you give the answer you think is the politically correct answer, but not the one you might truly hold. if you use techniques to uncover what respend dents think public confidence is 7 to 25és points lower that is captured in the polls. it's also important to note that some of the drivers of public confidence maybe eroding. one of the big is connections. people those numbers are dwin dwindling. now the draft generation is passing. >> correct me if i'm wrong, but support by republicans is more in decline than support by democrats of the military. do you attribute that to polarization and the way that now the military and claims of wokeness have become part of our political debate? >> yeah, it's still the case that republicans on average have

higher confidence than democrats, but the decline na we have seen in the last several years is mostly a decline among republicans. and i think you can trace it to september 2020. at the height of the campaign when then president trump started to attack the military, attack his own generals and criticize them, that created a permission swas for republicans to look at the military in a different way that's been echoed by other media personalities and other political leaders. now we have this crazy phenomenon where uniformed military is being treated like a combatant in the culture war. this politicizes the military and over time can cause a decline in confidence. >> so is that what you're describing at the root of the recruitment problems are being felt by all branches of the service? >> no, the recruitment problems are first and foremost a function of labor economics. there's great jobs available in

the civilian sector. all institutions are having trouble filling their hiring needs. and when that happens, it's a tough environment for recruiting. but on the margin, this can matter for recruitment. high confidence is recommended for others that serve. when confidence in the military goes down, there's going to be fewer people saying, yeah, go into the military. that's a good idea. and some of the polarized partisan critiques of the military that you're hearing on the fringes of the republican party, those can have a real negative effect on people's willing nness to serve. it's not the driver, but it's an unnecessary self-inflicted wound that makes it harder to recruit. >> i'm going to read aloud social media that came in so you know what it is and we'll respond together. what do we have on this subject? wokism destroys everything in its path, including the

military, says matthew. you would say what to him, peter? >> i would say we need to reconsider how we're treated treating the military in the culture war. republicans need to stop targeting the military, stop accusing the military by name and military leaders by name on the one hand. on the secondhand, democrats need to stop hiding behind the military to defend controversial policies. if it's a policy by the biden administration, civilian leaders in the department of defense take responsibility for advocating for it. then thirdly, the military needs to talk about its values, but in way that does not trigger culture war. so the military needs to recruit from all walks of life, but that doesn't mean they need to talk about dei or others that no longer mean to many members of americans what they once meant.

that terms have become politicized and they should talk about values in a different way. i don't think the military is woke. there's just not a lot of evidence that members of the military operate the way they truly woke institutions at a the campuses operate. but the military does have to recruit from a all walks of life and does have to forge those folks together. that requires being sensitive to differences. so i think it's a mistake. >> peter, good luck with the new book. thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> thank you for having your best and worst social media comments and the final result. cannot wait to see this. the poll question, do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien sp spacecraft? i watched my m mother go through being a single mom. at the end of the day,

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there's the result of this week's poll question. prelt close. do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft? 27,000 plus have voted, 55% say no, but 45% believe it. i thought that russia's testimony was credible, but i'm watching it on television saying, take me to your leader. give me one of the 40 who had hands on.

give me bob lazar. and then maybe those numbers will be flipped. reaction to this week's program. what else do we have? you will only read republican talking points because you're a right wing fascist low life. i guess that sums it up. tom, you got me. what else? give me something i can really respond to. unbelievable. smerconish should rename his show the hunter biden hour. he's devoted an inordinate amount of time to something of little substance. i walked through the public record as best i could in the span of five or ten minutes at the outset of the program. the issue warrants our attention. those two irs whistleblowers, one of whom on the program earlier in the hour, i found to be very credible. and the president's one-word answer of never, it never passed

the smell test. what parent among us has never had conversation with their children about their children's career? that's what the president is asking us to accept. maybe for awhile that answer we were just going to put up with it, but no. we need more now. and he's got to answer for it. the reports of my firing are premature. i will be on vacation next week. see ya. if you wanant laundry to smell fresh for weeks, make sure you have downy unstopables in-wash scent boosters. from prom dresses to workouts and new adventures you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated

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good saturday morning to you. it is july 29th.